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Thursday, June 29, 2017

Betty MacDonald, Ma and Pa Kettle and the absolute erasure

Hello 'Pussy' it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking:

You have a thing about Barack Obama. You are obsessed with Obama.
Obama haunts your dreams. One of your primary motivators is the
absolute erasure of Obama — were it possible — not only from the
political landscape but also from the history books.

When Betty
MacDonald's sister Alison Bard Burnett talkes about her experiences with
the Kettles even my mother-in-law is laughing. This is very surprising
because she laughs very seldom. We don't have neighbours like the Kettles. Our neighbours are like Mr. and Mrs. Hicks.They
have no children. We have a boy and two girls. Mr. and Mrs. Hicks are
cutting down everything in the garden. Ours looks like a paradise or a
green hell with many trees and branches. Mr. Hicks always says to us:
If you need help I'll cut everything down for you but we refuse so far.
We have two dogs. Mr. and Mrs. Hicks don't like dogs or cats because
Mrs. Hicks is very allergic. By the way we won't ever have any chickens
although is seems that our children bring a new pet home every day. I
know what they are talking about when they say: Mother, we have a
surprise! You won't believe it! ( I do! )

Mrs. Hicks is cleaning
the house night and day and is called ' our newspaper' because she
knows everything about the people in our community. You know I
thought it was a very witty idea to lend our Mrs. Hicks Betty
MacDonald's The Egg and I which she wasn't aware of. After she read
Betty MacDonald's book she said smiling: It was very funny but I dislike
this awful Mrs. Hicks. She obviously doesn't understand the meaning of
life. I couldn't say anything and looked at her with an open mouth. Mrs.
Hicks gave me a strange look and said: Darling, is everything ok with
you? You look terrible this morning!

I want to share a very
special Betty MacDonald family story. My grandmother wrote letters to
Betty MacDonald, Mary and Sydney Bard because she loved Betty
MacDonald's and Mary Bard's books. She was very fond after she got
delightful letters written by Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard and even from
mother Sydney Bard.

Trump’s Obama Obsession

Donald
Trump has a thing about Barack Obama. Trump is obsessed with Obama.
Obama haunts Trump’s dreams. One of Trump’s primary motivators is the
absolute erasure of Obama — were it possible — not only from the
political landscape but also from the history books.

Trump
is president because of Obama, or more precisely, because of his
hostility to Obama. Trump came onto the political scene by attacking
Obama.

Trump has questioned not only Obama’s birthplace but also his academic and literary pedigree.
He was head cheerleader of the racial “birther” lie and also cast doubt
on whether Obama attended the schools he attended or even whether he
wrote his acclaimed books.

Trump
has lied often about Obama: saying his inauguration crowd size exceeded
Obama’s, saying that Obama tapped his phones and, just this week,
saying that Obama colluded with the Russians.

It’s like a 71-year-old male version of Jan from what I would call the Bratty Bunch: Obama, Obama, Obama.

Trump
wants to be Obama — held in high esteem. But, alas, Trump is Trump, and
that is now and has always been trashy. Trump accrued financial wealth,
but he never accrued cultural capital, at least not among the people
from whom he most wanted it.

President Trump heading to
the White House Rose Garden on June 1, when he announced that he would
pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.Credit
Al Drago/The New York Times

Therefore,
Trump is constantly whining about not being sufficiently applauded,
commended, thanked, liked. His emotional injury is measured in his mind
against Obama. How could Obama have been so celebrated while he is so
reviled?

The whole world seemed to love Obama — and by extension, held America in high regard — but the world loathes Trump. A Pew Research Center report issued this week found:

“Trump
and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe,
and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations.
According to a new Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 nations, a
median of just 22 percent has confidence in Trump to do the right thing
when it comes to international affairs. This stands in contrast to the
final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when a median of 64 percent
expressed confidence in Trump’s predecessor to direct America’s role in
the world.”

Obama
was a phenomenon. He was elegant and cerebral. He was devoid of
personal scandal and drenched in personal erudition. He was a walking,
talking rebuttal to white supremacy and the myths of black pathology and
inferiority. He was the personification of the possible — a possible
future in which legacy power and advantages are redistributed more
broadly to all with the gift of talent and the discipline to excel.

It
is not a stretch here to link people’s feelings about Obama to their
feelings about his blackness. Trump himself has more than once linked
the two.

Just
two months before Trump announced his candidacy, he weighed in on the
unrest in Baltimore in the wake of the police killing of Freddie Gray,
tweeting:

“Our
great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact
on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”

Months earlier, following the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., after the police killing of Michael Brown, Trump complained:

“President
Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American
community—they have fared so poorly under his presidency.”

Trump also tweeted:

“Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!”

Clearly,
not only was Obama’s blackness in the front of Trump’s mind, but Trump
also appears to subscribe to the racist theory that success or failure
of a member of a racial group redounds to all in that group. This is a
burden under which most minorities in this country labor.

Trump’s
racial ideas were apparently a selling point among his supporters.
Recent research has dispensed with the myth of “economic anxiety” and
shone a light instead on the central importance race played in Trump’s
march to the White House. As the researchers Sean McElwee and Jason
McDaniel reported in The Nation in March:

“In
short, our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged
existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with
emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the
presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and
pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more
cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and
attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of
American politics.”

Trump
was sent to Washington to strip it of all traces of Obama, to treat the
Obama legacy as a historical oddity. Trump’s entire campaign was about
undoing what Obama had done.

Indeed,
much of what Trump has accomplished — and it hasn’t been much — has
been to undo Obama’s accomplishments, like pulling out of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate agreement and reversing
an Obama-era rule that helped prevent guns from being purchased by
certain mentally ill people.

For
Trump, even plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act aren’t
so much about creating better policy as they are about dismantling
Obama’s legacy. The problem with Obamacare isn’t that it hasn’t borne
fruit, but rather that it bears Obama’s name.

For Trump, the mark of being a successful president is the degree to which he can expunge Obama’s presidency.

About Me

Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.